How to be a Spiritual Gardener

I’ve spent many winter evenings looking through gardening catalogues dreaming of the beautiful flowers I will have in my garden in the summer. But I do not remember ever dreaming about the preparation and maintenance like turning heavy topsoil and digging weeds. But for both flowers and dreams to grow, that’s what we have to do.

~*~Planting the Garden of your Soul~*~

First thing is to choose a good location for the plant with the right requirements of sun, shade and moisture. Then the soil has to be prepared. There is a saying: dig a $100 hole for a $10 plant. You might dig down through many layers and remove depleted soil, clay or rocks. Then you’ll put back into the soil whatever is needed for the particular conditions the plant has. In wet, heavy soil you might add elements to encourage drainage. In dry soil you add mulch so that the soil will hold the water. You might feed the soil with compost and other nutrients. Finally the plant is ready to go in the ground. But you aren’t finished! This is the foundation – a definite important first step – but just the beginning.

In making dreams come to flower the process is much the same. First comes removing the layers that might prevent you from succeeding. Most of us have many layers to get through: self doubt, resentment, guilt, fear are a few. Next, you’ll begin to put back whatever is needed to nurture and support your desire or dream, such as love, respect, and trust.

While that plant or tree is becoming established in its new home, you water and feed it. You also protect it from all kinds of things: insects, animals, cold nights, hot days, harsh winds, drought — and sometimes even lawnmowers. And through all this caring and nurturing, you wait for the blooms. Sometimes we have to wait for more than one season for those precious blossoms to appear. What an act of faith and patience it is to plant a garden!

The garden of your soul is really no different: it needs to be carefully tended and protected while the dream is becoming established. With this care and attention, the blossoming will occur, but it is not possible to say when, and what happens with most of us is that we give up too soon. When we give up, we are no longer in alignment with the dream. It is as if not believing that the shoots coming up from the ground will actually become a rose so we stop watering them. Trust that things are in motion, but continue to tend and protect your dream.

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About Me

I was born at the peak of the baby boom and got to experience being a flower child only because my very small hometown caught up to the rest of the world so slowly. I have been a lifelong writer and reader, with aspirations of being a renaissance woman.